Marx
once said that he was not a Marxist [Attributed by Engels, letter
to C. Schmidt, 1890]. We are not allowed that luxury, for in a sense
we are all Marxists. We all live in a world which has been shaped
by the economic and social forces he identified, and one to a great
extent defined by the political forces his work inspired. Without
Lenin, Mao
and Stalin, the history of this century would have been very different,
though probably scarcely less chaotic or bloody. It is no exagerration
to say that, of all theorists of society, Karl Marx has deeply touched
and affected all our lives. Our modern political landscape reflects
divisions established in Marx's time, and in part under his influence.
Whatever their protesations, the Labour Party and the Conservative
Party were profoundly affected by the challenge of Marxist movements,
summarised in one of the biggest selling works in history, The Communist
Manifesto.

The
intellectual challenge to sociology on the part of Marxism was rather
later in coming, but when it did involved a regrounding of the study
of society in historically developing social and economic forces.
Academic social scientists came to acknowledge that social change
and conflict, as much as or more than stability and cooperation,
are fundamental features of modern society. Sociologists began to
study the forms of resistance to exploitation adopted by a variety
of people: working class pupils in an education system geared to
middle class aspirations; young blacks defined as delinquent; women
on the assembly line.

Marx
has been out of fashion for a long time. The success of free-market
economic theories throughout the world and the collapse of the Communist
states of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe took its toll, and
social theorists turned to the trendier ways of post-modernism,
social theory for those who find the Teletubbies too intellectually
taxing. However, like Slade and Cliff Richard records at Christmas
time, this one won't go away. His ideas are now beginning to gain
credence in the unlikeliest quarters. Right wing free-market think-tanks
are praising the originality and prescience of his thought. Indeed,
when what was the world's most succesful economy, South Korea, can
be overnight plunged into recession, the relevance of a thinker
who put recurrent economic crises at the heart of his analysis of
the capitalist system has to be acknowledged.

Like
Max Weber, Marx places inequality and social
division at the heart of his theory of society. However, whereas
most commentators before or since view division and conflict as
byproducts of various social processes, for Marx it is at the heart
of capitalist social relations. Further explanation will merely
duplicate what you will find in your lecture notes, the course texts,
and on these websites. Happy surfing.